Media & Public Relations

Magazine highlights Binghamton University business professor

2007-09-14

BINGHAMTON, NY – Fortune Small Business has highlighted Angelo Mastrangelo, an adjunct lecturer at Binghamton University, as one of the country’s top 18 professors in its Best Colleges for Entrepreneurs feature.

“Mastrangelo is a student favorite because his lessons include his own real-life examples,” the magazine wrote. “In 1980, he bought Adirondack Beverage Company, and built it into a $60 million business. He also teaches a class that features a business plan competition with a $2,500 prize. Now in its seventh year, the contest has generated six companies that are still operating.”

Mastrangelo, who teaches both graduates and undergraduates, focuses on helping his students learn to recognize or create opportunities. “It’s basically an exercise in problem solving,” he said. “Then the next step is how to create an organization to develop the opportunity.”

Mastrangelo himself is an entrepreneur and former owner of the highly successful Adirondack Beverage company. The son of an Italian immigrant in Endicott, Mastrangelo went to work as a salesman for a small upstate soda company after graduating from high school. He worked his way up to become general manager and then bought the company.

Over the next 13 years, Mastrangelo built the firm into a $60 million business. He sold the company in 1993 and enrolled in Harvard University, where he earned an MBA, followed by a PhD in organizational studies from the University at Albany.